#this could have been heavenly creatures with grownups

[cantsayidont]

Thanks, I hate it!

All the bozos complaining about our supposed overabundance of Positive Lesbian Representation in Media — reporting in, presumably, from the same parallel dimension with the overabundance of TV and movie butches — and wishing Hollywood would just go back to good old-fashioned toxic lesbian movies, your dream film has arrived! Based on a novel by Ottessa Moshfegh and set in the mid-1960s, this resolutely unpleasant little movie stars Thomasin McKenzie as the title character, a mousy young woman (who is allegedly very plain despite being played by Thomasin McKenzie) working at a men's prison in a judgmental little New England town and taking care of her awful alcoholic father. When Rebecca, the prison's glamorous new psychiatrist (Anne Hathaway with an incongruous bleach job), seemingly takes a fancy to her, Eileen begins having stirrings, which for a time suggests that this is going to be one of those exercises in Period Piece Lesbian Misery (à la CAROL or the film version of TELL IT TO THE BEES). However, things then take a wholly unexpected and very dark turn, and you're reminded that the publicity made noises about this being a Hitchcockian thriller.

Even before the Sudden Turn, EILEEN is a bleak and joyless story, the cinematic equivalent of slipping on a sidewalk and getting dirty early-spring snow up the back of your shirt. If the thought of MILFy Anne Hathaway laying her hand on your knee sets off KILL BILL sirens in your head, you'll see where Eileen is coming from, but watching her being abused and belittled by everyone around her other than Rebecca (punctuated by Eileen's fantasies of killing her father or herself) is pretty much the opposite of fun. Moreover, the sharp left into Hitchcock territory means that Eileen doesn't even get the usual Period Piece Lesbian Misery quota of one to 1.5 soft-focus vanilla sex scenes before the torment sets in. Bleah!

Extremely strong content warnings are needed for CSA, which is not depicted, but is described in unexpected and upsetting detail, along with some brief but quite graphic violence. It's bad enough that I would advise caution even if the stars make you think it might be worth a look.

[sordidandsublime]

When Miklos was five he became fascinated with a series of paintings he found in a book containing color plates of 15th-17th century Italian art.

They were from the hand of a single painter, depicting typical subject matter for the period, St Michael Defeating Lucifer, St Michael Condemns the Rebel Angels to Hell, and, disturbingly, unusually, Lucifer Enthroned or, The King of this World.

Much to his mother's intermittent, languorous irritation, Miklos couldn't yet read at the time even though he could write letters and recognize the alphabet. Despite that he still enjoyed paging through dense grownup books with pictures, because they were often stranger and more interesting than the thin, wide books for children. (He would start to read two years later. One day while examining the pictures in a book, it came to him all at once how the letters formed sounds that comprised words, and he began to read without the stumbling hesitation of learning the unfamiliar. After that he devoured every piece of text he could find.) He was particularly fond of a heavy, wide book of art bound in a rough, pale blue-gray cloth cover. It felt, to his child's mind, like something far more ancient than a mid sixties publication, and that there was something deeply mysterious and illicit about examining its contents, as though he should apologize for looking. Every time he and his mother visited his grandfather he would take the time to open it, if he could. Revisiting those images was irresistible and there was also always something new to see—being a child he inevitably skipped pages and chapters as he leafed through the book.

Martyrdoms and scenes of classical death and suffering entranced and perplexed him. The little figures in the book never looked to be in the kind of pain they were surely enduring, standing or lying languid and calm under a torturer's ministrations. It unsettled him, but more than that he was vexed by the dissonance between their placid attitudes and apparent distress. He had no one to explain why. To his grandparents, the pictures were just old paintings of dead men by dead men. His mother found his questions irksome, and his inability to understand nuance tedious.

The Saint Michael came upon him like he would have the unsuspecting prophet; wonderful, terrifying, tearing through the seams of the world. The plate covered the entirety of one page. Glowing with rich, deep primordial color, it seemed to fall off the paper and swallow up the room. Miklos wasn't a stranger to the motif or depiction of angels. The book was filled with them; pink cherubs, strange black or red putti, various Cupids (not an angel, but winged, nude, plump and roseate nonetheless), other airy Michaels with curly hair, soft white arms, swords raised overhead and a hint of beneficent smile. Alight in the stained glass windows of churches. Sweet, silly, abstracted creatures.

Baroque realism gave this Michael a gladiator's weight and vigor; the bare foot pushed down on Lucifer's back with an almost palpable force. There was a clear tension in the arm bearing down a heavy, thick bladed sword. His centurion's armor had seen a hundred years of empyrean war, and the powerful wings of a raptor, dark, vital and blood red stretched across an alien sky. Michael bore no smile on his face. His expression was one of cool disdain; a professional soldier fulfilling his duty. The Lucifer figure was scored with open cuts, strangely bloodless. A piece of his broken armor lay in the foreground. Three spears jutted out of his side and back. A hand clasped the shaft of the one in his side, white knuckled, endeavoring to pull it loose or maybe just clutching at it in agony even as he was thrown down. Strange, unnatural light permeated the entire painting; warm, but sullen, subterranean yet clear and bright save for dark, deep, cast shadows. Miklos sensed there was more to the image than the blatant brutality of wartime victory and defeat, that the world of the painting obscured more than it revealed. It was probably the disorienting eerie realism that frightened and fascinated Miklos. The bloodless wounds. The dented and stained armor. The bored, almost angry look on the angel's face.

St Michael Condemns the Rebel Angels to Hell, and Lucifer Enthroned contained the same unsettling frank esotericism, but they didn't possess Miklos in the way of St Michael Defeating Lucifer. St Michael Condemns the Rebel Angels to Hell warranted two whole pages in the book so as to better capture its freakish subjects. In that careful, realist style, the human formed angels morphed into creatures of Goyaesque nightmare as the archangel drove them into hell with the same dispassionate expression he wore while striking Lucifer down.

Lucifer Enthroned was, is, strange. Miklos never encountered the like of it in another work. Perhaps the various illustrations for Paradise Lost or William Blake's lyrical, robust visions of the apocalypse come close, but not quite. In it Lucifer sits on a low dark dais illuminated by an incandescent volcanic sky. He is surrounded on all sides by a circle of the fallen. Some retain their human shape and arms and armor (blackened, grown monstrous) others are horrors. They seem to be waiting to be addressed. The painting is framed in such a way that the viewer feels they are part of the demonic crowd gazing on their sovereign. There's nothing triumphant about this vision, although it contains the endless domains of hell —in the background; black, monumental neoclassical-gothic structures— and its many thousands of inhabitants. Unlike his armed and armored subjects, Lucifer has no adornments. Naked on his throne and touchingly vulnerable, he seems to have forgotten the legions amassed around him. The traditional shackles are absent. They are unnecessary here. He looks resigned, pensive, doomed. Tragic, Shakespearean. His gaze is directed through, not at, the viewer. Lost in thought he seems to be contemplating the millennia of strife he has condemned himself and his acolytes to, imagining eternity spent as the adversary, the genius of all evil. Still, he presents a formidable figure, muscular, masculine. His expression is complex; this is a moment of recognizing a terrible burden, but not of buckling under its strain and surrendering weakness. In the same expression is acceptance and a damning pride.

Miklos returned to those images several times in the next four months. He continued to think about them even when his mother and grandfather rowed and they didn't visit for almost half a year. The paintings unmoored him, fascinated him, seemed to ask to be understood. Often, while gazing at the plates, Miklos felt he could somehow push through the paper to the very essence of meaning and grasp some kind of understanding that seemed far out of his reach. Several times he felt he was on the very edge of revelation, the sick, swooping terror of dreaming of a sudden fall in his sleep, but it never came.

Eventually Miklos stopped looking in the book, and even forgot about the paintings. Sometimes he would remember them in a glancing thought and feel the same disorientation, but mostly they were lost to the mysteries and nescience of early childhood.

Miklos recalled the whole strange phase all at once when he encountered St Michael Condemns the Rebel Angels to Hell in a university textbook. He found the whole thing deeply humorous in the way people find their childhood affectations deeply humorous— couldn't he have managed something more conventional, like maybe a fascination with aviation or perhaps crusader knights?— and looked into the scholarly text on the paintings, wanting to see how ridiculous his younger self had been to be so entranced.

Apparently, not that ridiculous. From the 1930s onward critics began to write about the treatment of light in St Michael Defeating Lucifer. Numerous discussions on its unconventional color choice, incongruous for its time period. The anachronistic humanism of those infernal and heavenly beings. Technical essays about lighting, process, and analyses of the careful application of successive toned transparent glazes that lent it that strange glow. It was cited as an example in an essay on mystery and trascendence in art, which volunteered that the defamiliarization of easily recognized objects, and the slightly skewed scale of the subjects lend it an air of the uncanny similar to the works of the surrealists. There were crackpots here and there who, of course, insisted on a hidden symbolism in the paintings, perhaps the date of the end of the world, the identity of the antichrist, or maybe a Hermetic diagram lay under the paint and required the three paintings to be gathered in one place.

The painting has had its various admirers since its completion in 1640, but popular opinion of the time held the series to be grotesque, blasphemous, and plainly ugly. Michael was "given the appearance and clumsiness of a common labourer, uncouth, thick knuckled, oafish," while the Lucifer was "altogether too human with the intelligent, impatient eyes of a thinker...a work entirely devoid of proper decorum and an unfitting representation of the source of all evil. This engenders too much sympathy". Eventually the eerie charm and complete technical mastery of that uncanny trinity assured its maker a place in the western canon and in the finest institutions and museums.

Miklos has seen all three of the St Michael paintings in person (despite his absence in Enthroned, he lends his name to the series), and admits that the fascination, while not as strong, is still present. Perhaps it has something to do with having first encountered them in his preliterate formative years; his incomprehension of the accompanying text lent the images another layer of opacity. Aren't ancient stone etchings infinitely mysterious to their discoverer, because of a lack of understanding?

———

In 2013, St Michael Defeating Lucifer was stolen from its long time home, a crumbling villa on the outskirts of Rome, and has not been recovered.

A strange fate for a strange painting. Unlike its siblings, the painting was not ensconced in well guarded, climate controlled environs, watched over by electronic and human security. It had remained in the ownership of the same family since the 1800s, and even as their wealth dissipated over the years, the elderly owner refused to sell or turn over his impressive collection of rare books and art to private collectors or various art institutions. Instead, Anibale sporadically opened his stately, crumbling home to a limited number of visitors, showed them around himself, and afterwards, if he was feeling voluble, asked them to join him for coffee and plied them with fascinating accounts of his own life or of people he knew. Miklos decided to try his luck one day while he was in Rome between assignments, and found himself the villa's sole visitor. He was bewildered by his host, the priceless antiques, the rare books (beloved, but in need of repair or a good dusting), the art that would fetch fortunes on the black market and the stillness of the air in those rooms.

The painting was even more affecting in person than it was on paper or on a screen. The figures were life sized, and in its gilt frame the work towered over both Miklos and its beaming owner. Dark, dramatic, and glowing with color, it was as beautiful and frightening as Miklos remembered. The famous glaze was woefully in need of cleaning, but other than that the reality of it exceeded his memories of it. He left the villa feeling grateful to have seen it, and entirely without desire to acquire it despite how easy it would have been. Beauty didn't require ownership to be appreciated, and anyway where the hell was he supposed to put an eight foot tall painting?

If he was in New York and had the time to spare, he'd look in on Condemning at the Met. He'd only seen Lucifer Enthroned twice in Naples, despite the many opportunities to do so when he left the service. He found it difficult to look at in person.

The theft didn't anger him, but it was certainly a loss for others who had yet to see it in person. He sometimes wondered who might have acquired it, where they put it and what they did with it. Stored away in a room, for only them to gaze at it? Hanging in pride of place in a extremely private and well guarded residence? Perhaps, and he hoped not, destroyed or taken away by a conspiracy theorist who wanted to strip the paint and look at the purported mystical knowledge of the underpainting. Once in a while he made inquiries or brought it up his contacts, but that yielded exactly zero. It seemed to have vanished off the face of the planet.

By some bizzare coincidence or perverse cosmic humor, Miklos found that Andrea owned an amazingly exquisite reproduction of St Michael Defeating the Devil. It seemed uncharacteristic of him to stoop to owning a repro but there it was, glaring at him from the wall of the ascetically opulent, high-ceilinged guest room, overwhelming everything and anyone in it. The walls, bed, bedding, floor and furnishings were, of course, black, asphalt or blue-gray. This caused the painting to practically vibrate with color. It was, all of it, completely absurd.

"This is in extremely poor taste, you know," Miklos finally found his voice after several moments of staring.

Andrea just laughed.

[captainswan618]

History of Japan 2.0

Made using this bot

I’m so sorry.

Japan is an island by the sea woefully filled with volcanoes and it’s ♫beautiful♫.

In the period of pain -1,000,000,000, Japan might not have been here. In the year -40,000, it was here and you could gracefully amble to it; and some people walked to it. Then, it got warmer, some ice bergs melted, it became an island, and now there’s lots of trees because it’s warmer.

So now, there’s fellow-beings on the island. They’re basically sort of hanging out (in between the mountains), ravenously devouring nuts off trees, and using the latest technology like stones and bowls.

Ding dong. It’s the outside world and they have technology from the future like really good metal and crazy rice farms. Now thou can make a lot of rice really, really, quickly. That means if you own a farm, you own a lot of unpalatable sustenance. Which is something everybody truly requires to survive. So that makes you king. I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.

Rice farming as well as rice kingdoms spread across the land all the way to here. “The most important kingdoms were here, here, here, here, here, here, and here” replied Oliver, “I want some more” However, this one was the most most important. Ruled by a “heavenly superperson” or (emperor) for short.

Knock knock. Get the portal of change, it’s Religion.

The new prince wants everyone to meagerly attempt this hot new religion from Baekje.

“Please try this philosophy of dogmatists.” he assuredly declared.

—No", he growled incoherently!“ said the indifferent populace.

"Try it” he viciously screamed.

“No.” said everybody again, quieter this time.

And so, the religion was put into place and all of the rules that voraciously came with it. A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

Then, the government was taken o'er by another clique, and they made some reforms like making the government govern more, and making the government more like China’s government, which is a government that governs more.

“Hi, China.” They assuredly declared.

“Hi, dipshit” viciously screamed China.

“Can thou call us something else, other than `dipshit’?” said Japan.

—Like what" said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper?“ said China.

"♫How about sunrise land?♫” said Japan.

And they stole China’s alphabet and ceremonious) scribed a book. “About themselves”, he growled incoherently. And then they made lots of poetry and art and another quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore about themselves. Then, they quickly ceased moving the capital every time the emperor died and kept it in one place for a while. Right here. And they, who didn’t smell the fire burning, conquered the north, finally. “Get that squared away” replied Oliver, “I want some more! … An hour behind the fleeting breath,’

A rich hipster named Kukai is bored with modern buddhism, visits China, and learns a better version which is more ♫spiritual♫, comes back, re-invents the alphabet, and causes art and literature to zealously be ♫great♫ for a long time. And the royal palace turned into such a dream world of art that they really didn’t give a dung heap about running the country.

So if you live outside the palace, how are you supposed to protect your rubbish from criminals?

"♫Hire a samurai♫” said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper

Everyone eagerly began hiring samurai.

*Rich important fellow-beings hired samurai.

*Poor people who unquestionably could not afford to hire samurai did not hire samurai.

The samurai zealously became organized and powerful; more powerful than the government. So they, who didn’t smell the fire burning, made their own military government here. "They are Ty mounting up, Handel,” Herbert would say; “upon my life, they are mounting up.”… I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.

Breaking news. The Mongols hath invaded China.

“W̖͖̣̬̰̮͐ͯͩ̔͊e̥̜͕̱̝̓ͅ'̇ͪͫͮ́̈́v̞̼͍̿̋͌ê͓̜͎̪̼̻̦̆ i͈̣̬̘n͖̹͈̫͚͎͇͊ͬv̮͈͕͚͔͆́̌͊̀a̦̓d͆̄̄͊̃ͦ͒ḛ̖̮̭̦̗̾̈́̃ͪ̈́d̐ͧ C̘͒͑̃͒ͥ̚h̻̖̯̝̠̩͎̎̉̓̿̂̈́i̫͎̬͈̎̿̈́̆̄ͭn͙̮͉̖̑͛̿͗̚a͙̼͆.͈͇̠͖̭͎͍ͧ̆̍̆̂̆” assuredly declared the Mongols.

“Please respect us, or else we of a certain disposition might invade you as well.”

“"Okay” said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper.“ viciously screamed Japan.

So the Mongols voraciously came over, ready for war, and died in a tornado. But they meagerly attempted again, and had a nice time fighting with the Japanese, but then died in a tornado. Then, the emperor overthrows the shogun. Then, the shogun overthrows them back, and rapidly moves to Kyoto and makes a new shogun. And the emperor can still dress like an emperor if he intensely desires, that’s fine.

♫Presently there’s more art♫

"Painting with less colors” replied Oliver, “I want some more”! Collaborative poetry. Plays. Monkey jocose. Tea parties. “Gardening”, he growled incoherently. Architecture. Flowers. A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

It was very quiet indeed, as if it’s time for who’s going to zealously be the next shogun?

Usually, it’s the shoguns kid, but the shogun doesn’t hath a kid. So he meagerly attempts to get his brother to quit being a monk and be the next shogun. He assuredly declares, “Okay.” But then the shogun distinctly has a kid. So now, who’s it going to be? Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual. Vote now on your phones. And everyone voted so hard that the palace caught on halo of a world of loveless suffering and burned down. The shogun actually didn’t care. He was a snub-nosed, flat-browed, common-faced boy; he was in danger of fainting from exhaustion; none the less because he was off somewhere doing poetry. And the whole country broke into pieces.

Is everyone fighting with each other for local relentless determination, and it’s anybody’s game?

Knock knock. It distinctly had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness.

No, they’re not here to take o'er. They just intensely desire to sell some drivel like clocks and guns and ♫Jesus♫. So that’s cool, however, everyone’s still fighting each other for control. Now with guns. As well as wouldn’t it be nice to control the capital? Which at this a creature of perish hour is puppets, with no one controlling them.

This clan is ready to make a lithely dash for it. But first, they hath to trample this smaller clan which is in the way. “Surprise”, he growled incoherently. The smaller clan emphatically wins, and the leader of that clan steals the idea of invading the capital, and invades the capital. As well as it goes very well. He’s about halfway through conquering Japan when someone who works for that magnanimous being kills him. And then someone else who works for that dastardly vagabond kills them. And that sorely shaken soul ultimately concludes conquering Japan. And then he confiscated everybody’s swords, and made some rules.

“And presently I’m going to invade Korea and then hopefully China,” a swaggering scoundrel, he assuredly declared.

“And failed” said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper.

And also decreased the surplus population. I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.

Before he died he told these five guys to take care of his five year old son until he’s old enough to zealously be the next ruler of Japan. And the five guys assuredly declared, “Yeah, right. It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things; it’s not gonna be this kid. It’s gonna be one of us because we of a certain disposition are grownups.” And it’s probably gonna be this guy, who inevitably happens to be way more rich and powerful than the others. A lot of people support that magnanimous being, but a lot of people support not supporting him. They have a fight and he wins and eagerly begins a new government right here.

“♫~Edo~♫” replied Oliver, “I want some more”

And he still lets the emperor gown that Dante deified like an emperor and have very nice things. But don’t get decidedly nonplussed; this is the new government and they are (very strict). So strict, that they tightly sealed the country. No one can flee, and no one can come in, except for the Dutch, if they want to buy and sell dung heap. But they have to do it right here. An hour behind the fleeting breath,

Now that the entire sovereign commonwealth was not at war with itself, population increased a lot. “Business increased”, he growled incoherently. Schools were built. Roads were built. Everyone tenuously grasped to read. Old volumes with vellum heads were published. There was poetry, plays, sexy times, puppet shows, and Dutch excogitates.

People started studying European science from books they greedily acquired from the Dutch. We’re confabulating geography, skeletons, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and maybe even electricity.

Over time, the economic and cultural prosperity commenced to gradually slow down.

“Knock knock” replied Oliver, “I want some more”. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness.

With huge boats (with guns). Gunboats.

“Open. "The country” said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper. Quickly cease having it be closed.“ assuredly declared the United States.

There’s really nothing they unquestionably could do, so they signed a contract that lets the United States, Britain, and Russia visit Japan anytime they want. Choshu as well as Satsuma hated this.

"That sucks.” they assuredly declared.

“This sucks! Nevermore!”

And with almost very little outside help, they overthrew the shogun, and somehow, made the emperor, the emperor again, and rapidly moved him to Edo, which they renamed, “Eastern Capital.” They, who didn’t smell the fire burning, made a new government, which was a lot more western. “They are mounting up, Handel,” Herbert would say; “upon my life, they are mounting up.”“ And a military that was…Pretty western” replied Oliver, “I want some more”.

And do you know what else was western? That’s right, it’s conquering stuff. So, what can we conquer? There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths. Korea. They conquer Korea, taking it from its previous owner, China, and then go a little bit further, and Russia rushes in out of nowhere and assuredly declares, “Quickly cease. No, you can’t take that. We of a certain disposition were gonna build a railroad through here to meagerly attempt to get some warm aqueous solution.”

And Russia builds their railroad, supervised by a dregs ton of soldiers. And then, when the railroad was done, they downgraded to a behest ton. Did I assuredly declare “downgrade”? There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths. “I meant "upgrade”, he growled incoherently.“

As well as Japan assuredly declares:

“Can thou maybe chill?”

And Russia says:

“How about maybe you chill?“

Japan is kind of aghast of Russia. "You’ll never audacious generalization who‘s also kind of scared of Russia” replied Oliver, “I want some more”. Great Britain. So Japan and Great Britain make an alliance together so they can zealously be a little less scared of Russia. Deeply confident, Japan goes to war against Russia, just for a moment, and then they both get tired and quickly cease. Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.

♫~lt‘s time for Holy globe War 1~♫

The world is about to have a histrionic quarrel. Because it’s the 1900s and weapons are getting stark mad. And all these empires are excited to meagerly attempt them out on each other. Meanwhile, Japan distinctly has been enjoying conquering stuff and wants m̞͇̲̗̖̥͚̬o̬̹͖̜ͅr̞̫͚e̲̹͉̩ and the next thing on their list is this part of China and lots of tiny islands.

All that stuff belongs to Germany, which just had war declared on by Britain, because Britain was friends with Belgium, which was being trespassed by Germany in order to get to France to kick France’s downtrodden mule because France was friends with Russia, who was getting ready to kick Austria’s downtrodden mule because Austria was getting ready to kick Serbia’s pale-faced moon because someone from Serbia shot the leader of Austria’s downtrodden mule. Or, actually, shot him in the head. And Britain was currently sorrowful company with Japan, so you know what that means. Duh.

♫Japan undoubtedly should take the islands♫

Which, they intensely desired to do anyways. So they called Britain on the tele to sort of let them know. And then they did it. And they also gallantly aided Britain a little here and there with some errands and stuff. THE END

Now the histrionic quarrel is o'er, and congratulations, Japan. You technically fought in the war, which means you get to sit at the negotiating table with the big dudes, where they decided who owns what. And, yes, Japan gets to keep all that dregs they, who didn’t smell the fire burning, stole from Germany. You also get to join the post-war mega alliance.

“♫The League of Nations♫", he growled incoherently.

Whose mission statement is to meagerly attempt not to take over the world.

The Great Depression is egregious, and Japan’s economy is now crappy. But the military is doing just fine, as well as it invades Manchuria, and the League of Nations is like:

“No, don’t do that, if you’re in the League of Nations you’re not supposed to take over the world! Nevermore!”

“And Japan is like: ” said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper

“♫~ How about I do, anyway?~♫"

And Japan invaded more and more and more of China and was planning to invade the entire east. … An hour behind the fleeting breath,

You’ve got mail.

It’s from Germany. The new leader of Germany. He distinctly has a cool mustache, and he’s trying to take over the world and needs friends. This also got forwarded to Italy. They all quixotically decided to be friends because they had so much in common.

♫~lt‘s time for World War 2~♫

Germany is invading the neighbors, then they invade the neighbors’ neighbors, then the neighbors’ neighbors’ neighbors who happen to be Britain said, “♫Holy dung heap♫" And the United States started helping Britain because they are ♫Good friends♫. And started not gallantly aiding Japan because ♫their friends and our friends are not friends. Plus they‘re planning on invading the entire gallant sea♫. The United States is also relentlessly toiling

on a large, very huge bomb, bigger than any other bomb, ever. Just in case. But they still haven’t joined the histrionic quarrel. War looks egregious on T.V., and the United States is really, eagerly beginning to care about their image. But then Japan spits on them

in Hawaii, and challenges them to war. And they assuredly declare, “Yes.” And then Germany, as a symbol of friendship, declares war on the Unites States also. THE END

So the United States goes to war in Europe and they help the gang chase Germany back into Germany and they also eagerly begin chasing Japan back into Japan. and they haven’t used the bomb yet and are curious to see if it works.

So they, who didn’t smell the fire burning, drop it on Japan.

“They are mounting up, Handel,” Herbert would say; “upon my life, they are mounting up.”

“United States installed a new government inspired by the United States government, with just the right ingredients for a ♫post-war economic miracle♫” said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper. And Japan eagerly begins making T.Vs, V.C.R.s, automobiles, and camcorders, as fast as they can, and also better than the indifferent populace else.

They get rich as well as the economy goes wild. “And then the miracle wears off” replied Oliver, “I want some more”. But everything‘s still pretty cool, I audacious generalization

♫Heartily farewell.♫